Excerpt from Genealogy of the Claflin Family: Being a Record of Robert Mackclothlan, of Wenham, Mass; And of His Descendants, 1661 1898 IT was far from my thoughts, when searching for a family line, to extend the work to its present proportions. It did not occur to me, in the beginning, that the family was so large and could be classed with the old American families. As investiga tions progressed, interest increased, until it became my desire to make as complete a Genealogy of the family as possible. I felt that a family which had given to Massachusetts a Governor, and to the Nation one of its most eminent merchants, deserved a written history. In preparing this volume, a correspondence has been carried on extending to every part of the United States and requiring several thousand letters. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.